Why you may want to think twice about healthy sweeteners

As I am prepping for a Free 5-day Sugar Detox that’s coming up on June 4, I had a couple thoughts that I wanted to share.

First off, why would you ever want to detox from sugar??! Dropping sugar is the solution for more energy, weight loss, younger-looking skin, less inflammation, and more. So much of our health can be improved when we get rid of added sugars.

But that can be hard to do! And not necessarily your definition of fun. As humans, we always want the easy way, right? Me included. We want to be able to eat and enjoy whatever we want without the repercussions. Just look at the popularity of Paleo, Vegan, Keto, and other buzz-word recipes for brownies and cookies and cakes. We’re looking for a way to eat cake but still get the benefits of dropping sugar. We fool ourselves into thinking these recipes are magical. Here’s the deal: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

The vast majority of the recipes I see still use sweeteners like Stevia or sugar alcohols or some other form of ultra-concentrated sweetener. These are not free for alls! They might be better than refined white sugar, but they’re not free for alls.

The Problem with Stevia

For one thing, just from a pure calorie intake, you can’t eat a whole bunch of cake and still meet your health goals. I don’t care if it’s Paleo or Vegan or Keto or the next diet trend.

Secondly, we look to these sweeteners as though they are a wonder-food, something you can eat without spiking your blood sugar. That might be true, but it’s still a sweetener. It still makes you crave more sweet.

And there could be other health reasons not to simply swap alternative sweeteners for your daily sugar. Take my story for example. I used to use Stevia pretty much every single day. It was in my protein powder, I would add it to tea, hot chocolate, stuff like that.

Then I realized that I was getting really bad breakouts. Like, worse than I had as a teenager style breakouts. Once I did what I teach my clients to do (an elimination diet), I figured out it was the Stevia causing my breakouts. I stopped using it and my skin cleared up. Of course this will not be everyone’s experience, but I was using a high-quality 100% Stevia and I still had trouble. If it’s showing up on your face, it’s doing something not great in your body, right? It wasn’t the magic bullet I so desperately wanted. (insert sad face!!)

Ultra-concentrated natural sweeteners like stevia keep the craving for sweet going. Although I do ‘allow’ for stevia and other sweeteners in my sugar-free detox, THE best way to kick sugar cravings is to eliminate all of the added sweeteners. That way, we don’t have to constantly rely on willpower to fight our sugar cravings.

What can you do?

I wish there was an easy button. I wish we could just use lemon essential oil to cleanse and counteract all of the sugar we ate and be good. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. YES you can support your body with essential oils and yes I’m going to teach you how to use specific oils to make the process of cutting back on sugar so much easier, but you have to do some of this work.

I’m going to show you how easy it is to drop added sugars and how much better you’ll feel after just a few days! Join my free 5-day Sugar Detox here for the support, accountability, and community you need to make this happen!